Colonel G---- P---- looked grey and haggard; this termination of an enterprise of which he had been the principal organizer was a set-back in his career, but to all personal considerations he was indifferent. The causes of this sudden display of energy on the part of the Great Powers did, however, give him food for anxious reflection. He saw the handiwork of Austria-Hungary, and said bitterly: “Albania is a small country, but it contains three races and four religions. There is only one way of maintaining peace here, and that is by dividing this country between Servia and Greece. At the beginning it would be hard, but no harder for the Albanians than when they were under the Turks, from whom we have liberated them. Austria wants an autonomous Albania, though she knows it is an absurdity, because she does not want peace in the Balkans, except on her own terms. Great Britain and France are helping Austria--God knows why! What do your people know about Albania?” He pointed to the warships in the bay and added: “Today is the first birthday of autonomous Albania; it is a bad day for all the Balkan States.”
I thought of that suburb in Berlin where there was one bank too many, and then of a Conference of Ambassadors in London, called to resolve the Albanian riddle. Burian[13] would be there as well as Mensdorff.[14] Austria would speak with no uncertain voice. If the British Government had a policy in Albania, it was surely an Austrian policy. A division of Albania between Servia and Greece was the logical outcome of the Balkan War of 1912; it might have been effected under the control of the Great Powers and guarantees could have been exacted for the protection of the different nationalities. For harder questions have been dealt with on these lines, since the expulsion of the Serbs from the Albanian coast.
THE SECOND BALKAN WAR AND THE TREATY OF BUCHAREST
In April, 1913, representatives of the Balkan States were summoned, for the second time, to Great Britain, and once again the negotiations threatened to drag on interminably. They were cut short, however, by Sir Edward Grey, who had lost patience with the procrastinating methods of the delegates, and a treaty was signed, known as the “Peace of London.”